Rev. Robert Drinan, Ex-Congressman, Dies at 86

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 (AP) — The Rev. Robert F. Drinan, a Jesuit who served in Congress for 10 years until stepping down in response to a papal order, died Sunday. He was 86 and lived here in housing for the Georgetown University Jesuit community.

A university statement Sunday night said Father Drinan had recently been ill with pneumonia and congestive heart failure.

An internationally known human rights advocate, Father Drinan represented Massachusetts in the House of Representatives for 10 years in the 1970s, stepping down only after a worldwide directive from Pope John Paul II barring priests from holding public office.

He was elected in 1970 as a Democrat, after defeating Representative Philip J. Philbin in a primary and again in the November election, when Mr. Philbin was a write-in candidate.

Although a poll at the time showed that 30 percent of the voters in his district thought it was improper for a priest to run for office, Father Drinan considered politics a natural extension of his work in public affairs and human rights.

His bid for office came a year after he returned from a trip to Vietnam, where he said he discovered that the number of political prisoners being held in South Vietnam was rapidly increasing, contrary to State Department reports.

In a book the next year, he urged the Catholic Church to condemn the war as “morally objectionable.”

Father Drinan ran for Congress on a platform of opposition to the Vietnam War. During his Congressional tenure, he normally wore a dark suit with clerical collar and lived in a simple room in the Jesuit community at Georgetown.

Photo

The Rev. Robert F. DrinanCredit
Doug Mills/Associated Press

But Father Drinan wore his liberal views more prominently. He opposed the draft, worked to abolish mandatory retirement and raised eyebrows with his more moderate views on abortion and birth control.

And he became the first member of Congress to call for the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon — although the call was not related to the Watergate scandal, but to what Father Drinan viewed as the administration’s undeclared war against Cambodia.

“Can we be silent about this flagrant violation of the Constitution?” Father Drinan asked. “Can we impeach a president for concealing a burglary but not for concealing a massive bombing?”

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Decades later, at the invitation of Congress, he testified against the impeachment of another president, Bill Clinton. Father Drinan said Mr. Clinton’s misdeeds were not as serious as Nixon’s, and that impeachment should be for an official act, not a private one.

He told the Judiciary Committee members reviewing Mr. Clinton’s case that, in 1974, “the country knew there was extensive lawlessness in the White House.”

“The documentation of appalling crimes was known by everyone,” he continued. “Abuse of power and criminality were apparent to the American people.”

Father Drinan left office in 1980 — “with regret and pain” — finally yielding to the increased pressure from his superiors, including the pope.

But he continued to be active in political causes. He served as president of the Americans for Democratic Action, crisscrossing the country giving speeches on hunger, civil liberties and the perils of the arms race. He spoke out against President Ronald Reagan and President Bush, and lectured and wrote about gun control, world hunger and the war on terrorism’s impact on human rights.

He also took a post as professor of law at Georgetown University in 1981, where he taught courses on human rights, constitutional law, civil liberties, legislation, ethics and professional responsibility.

Correction: February 1, 2007

An obituary by The Associated Press on Monday about the Rev. Robert F. Drinan, a Jesuit priest who served in Congress for 10 years, attributed an erroneous distinction to him. He was the first of two Catholic priests to serve as a voting delegate in Congress  not the only one. (Robert J. Cornell of Wisconsin was the second, serving two terms. At least two Episcopal priests have also been members of Congress.) The obituary also incorrectly described Father Drinan’s attire while serving in Congress. He normally wore a dark suit with clerical collar, not the robes of his clerical order.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Rev. Robert F. Drinan, Antiwar Congressman, Dies at 86. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe